Washington Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

By Doug Bing, Washington Conference president

Have you ever been thankful for crumbs?

Most of the time when there are just crumbs left from a delectable meal it is because someone else ate all the good food before you got there.

Maybe you went through potluck line last, and you see the last little bit of some particularly good casserole that you know is always good. But just as you get there someone takes that last bit. You are left scraping the leftover bits and pieces into your plate just to get a taste.

Or maybe you come home late thinking that you will get to have a nice chocolate chip cookie that you know was in the jar when you left in the morning. You reach into the jar and there is nothing but crumbs and you look around to see your wife pop the last bit of cookie into her mouth.

In our house it is usually the other way around in that I am popping the last bit into my mouth and my wife is looking at me wondering how I could do that right in front of her.

So you are left with the crumbs.

Are you thankful for the crumbs?

This week while reading Mark 7:28 I realized that I am thankful for the crumbs.

The verse says,

Jesus had made a special trip into a Gentile area and there met a woman who knew who he was and she wanted her child healed from demon possession. She had faith that Jesus could heal her.

She also was persistent. She kept asking.

Jesus told her that children eat first and that you shouldn’t take their food from them. Yet he was just testing her, and she could see right through it and said yes but the dogs under the table know that something is going to drop down and they will also eat. Jesus rewarded her faith and said your daughter is healed.

You see most of us are Gentiles. For Jewish people of that day, we would be considered unclean.

Yet Jesus made sure to make it very clear that the gospel was for everyone.

Jesus made sure to touch all sorts of people that were considered unclean. He touched lepers. He touched caskets with people in them on the way to burial. He touched blind people. He touched people on the Sabbath and every other day of the week.

He didn’t make any distinction about who He would touch. He was liberal in spreading around the gospel. Even if it was in crumb form. ‘Cause one crumb of salvation is really all you need.

So I am thankful for the crumbs and I want to touch people like Jesus did. How about you?